My name is Chris Sligh. As an artist I'm award-winning, critically acclaimed & mildly-to-not popular; I wrote a number 1 song (Here Comes Goodbye) for Rascal Flatts. I'm married to Sarah and I'm deeply in love. Most importantly, I am a Christ-follower.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

So it is about 99.9% sure that my next label home will be a major label. Not just any major label...one in particular, but until the deal is finalized I'd feel more comfortable waiting to tell you guys specifics. However, I want to let you guys know what's going on...

The morning that I was granted my wish to be released from my deal with Brash, about 10 minutes after the release phone call, I was on the phone with the President of a major label talking about signing there. The next morning we (Mitch & I) had a meeting with him, the VP of A&R and the VP of Marketing and we just talked about the direction of the record and we gave them the songs.

That was Friday a week ago. This last week, everyone had time to live with the music and I got to talk with the President of the company on Friday afternoon this week and all cylinders are firing on getting this deal up and running and having new music recorded and into your hands as fast as possible.

Obviously, deals are negotiations and negotiations can go wrong from time to time, but I am pretty sure that everyone involved (I know it's the case on my end of things) really wants this to work out and work out quickly! We're really hoping to have a single out by the time the Back To School Tour II happens.

Speaking of...

Back to School is going out August 27 to November 1 with Aaron Shust and I co-headlining and Rough Draft and a soon-to-be-announced guest opening. It's only May and we already have close to 30 shows on the books for the tour!!! We are working to have over 40 and as many as 60! I'm so pumped about this tour it's not even funny!

So anyway...all is good on Sligh front! Just wanna make sure you guys are updated through the highs and lows!

Saturday, May 16, 2009

So, if you've kept up with my twitter (@ ChrisSligh) you know that I am no longer with Brash Music. I wanted to take a little time to quickly bring everyone up to date with what is going on.

Officially, Brash decided not to exercise the option to make my 2nd and final album on my deal. This was a decision that ultimately was a mutual decision, though Brash had the final decision. You see a lot of people who come out of record deals and claim it was mutual...I'm pretty sure they're not always mutual...in fact I have a couple of friends who were dropped that said at the time it was mutual, but if you asked them now, they'd admit that - though they weren't exactly surprised or necessarily upset with the new - they were dropped. In this case, I assure you, that though Brash had the ultimate decision, it had come to the place that both of us were ready for a decision.

Now, some may ask me how it could come to this, when they read my glowing words about Brash in the recent Christianity Today article. Everything I said about Brash in that article was remarkably true. The guys at Brash are incredible men who have integrity and are genuinely trying to make the record business better. My opinion of them has not changed through any of this.

Ultimately, what it came down to was that we disagreed on a very basic level on how this 2nd record should be treated. From what I can understand they liked the songs, so it wasn't that. It was how I wanted to treat the record and how I wanted to the record the record as well as the campaign I wanted to use in promoting the record. Also we disagreed on the co-production of the record and how much a co-producer should be used.

It's strange that something that seems so small on paper was so large in real life. But both of us were at a place where we weren't willing to budge on certain points - unfortunately the points we wouldn't budge on happened to be the exact same ones.

So...the next label will soon be announced. And the album will be recorded very soon. Hopefully we'll have a single out by the fall tour.

So, there are mixed emotions involved...ultimately parting ways was the best thing to happen. But it also stinks because I'm parting ways with great guys. But I look to the future with hope and excitement...

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Some people have wondered why I have struggled with Jade...no worries...it's all good. No Jaded-ness here. I can't go into details, nor do I want to, but I have a clear vision for the next album. A clear artistic vision and some people involved with the process have, over the last couple of weeks, decided to peek their head into the process and start to confuse the vision. That leads to frustration, which leads to anger which leads to being jaded...it's the story of the music business. I tried to put myself into a situation with all the people around me from management to band to label that would shelter me from the jade, but it still has crept in. Thankfully, I'm at a place of peace. More later...

However, I am in the midst of putting up some new demos! So you guys can start to digest some of the new music! Head over to myspace.com/chrisslighproductions and check it out! Do remember that these are ROUGH demos...they will sound better and different in the final version (this is more for the people who weren't around for the first time we did this...)